by Kerri Sharpe
‘Have you ever been in love?’ Lauren asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What’s it like?’
‘This isn’t it.’
‘Good.’
There was a silence.
Lauren slept and dreamed of home. Of the greenness of home, the boys who smelled like their mothers’ clean laundry, the girls fated to marry. She dreamed of her high school sweetheart and his tenderness in the back seat of his car.
When she woke, it was light and Ben was gone. She could hear laughter and conversation on deck. The clinking of glasses. Shit. She slipped into her clothes, opened the hatch, and peered up at the deck. She clambered on to the roof of the lifeboat and pulled herself up over the railing. Breakfasters turned and stared, teacups held halfway to their lips, forks frozen in the air. She knew how she looked, dishevelled, sleepy-eyed, a stowaway. A matronly woman with tight white curls pursed her lips in disapproval. A red-faced man laughed for a moment.
‘Your young gentleman made his escape almost an hour ago. Didn’t expect that he’d had a companion.’ The man’s eyes crinkled into tiny slits with depraved delight. You’re all voyeurs, Lauren thought. Perverts. She curtsied exaggeratedly, before turning towards the elevator to the lower decks.
Lauren stopped in front of Ben and Cass’s door, beige with gold numbers, identical to all the other cabin doors on the whole ship. She knocked. How could Ben have left her alone in the lifeboat? She was supposed to leave him, lonely in the morning light. She knocked again. Jerk. She tried the doorknob and, when it turned in her hand, she pushed into the room.
On the bed, Cass’s enormous naked breasts jiggled as she writhed against the white sheets. Sweat stood out on her collarbone, her hairline, her upper lip. Between her legs, Ben lapped at her clit, one hand reaching up to Cass’s mouth, where she sucked on his fingers, the other holding her ass. The embrace wasn’t familial. Cass’s pinkly round and supple body was passionately enmeshed with Ben’s long and sinewy paleness.
Lauren stood stock still, waiting for the image to make sense. For a moment, she wanted to join the wicked, moaning, quivering union and be one with the sweat and the bliss. Lauren looked at Ben’s naked back, his phoenix, which only hours ago had belonged to her. Traitor. Ben looked up at her, his mouth shiny with Cass’s juices.
‘Where are you from, Lauren?’ Ben didn’t bother wiping his mouth.
‘Toronto.’
‘We’ll check that off our list, then.’
Cass giggled as she pushed Ben’s head back down into her cunt. Only then did Lauren notice the words ‘INCONCESSUS AMOR’ tattooed on Cass’s hip. Forbidden Love.
Virginia St George’s story, Life Boat, appears in the Wicked Words collection Sex on the Move.
Doctor’s Orders Jessica Donnelly
SHE PULLED BACK the curtain and stepped forwards briskly, as she liked to do when meeting patients at the hospital for the first time. It made her feel like she was filling the role her white coat demanded of her: authoritative, confident, a woman in charge. She trotted out her familiar line: ‘Hi, I’m Dr Cooper, how can I help?’
‘Hello, Emma,’ he said.
For a second, she was thrown. But then even before she had the chance to look at him properly, she knew who he was. That voice. Jon Adams. Third year at university.
‘Jon! What a surprise! I –’
‘Didn’t expect to see me?’
‘God, no, I – how are you? I mean, what’s the matter?’
‘Well, Doctor, it’s my knee,’ he said, and suddenly it was there again, the old knowing intimacy in his voice, making her instantly nervous. She took a deep breath and looked at him. Jon Adams. Jon bloody Adams. Dark; long-bodied; a sleepy strong-nosed face; a hidden, telling smile – a ‘tall glass of water’ – that was what she’d written in her diary. And she’d written so much about him in her diary. He had a quietness about him. If you didn’t know, you would say he was reserved, even shy. But she did know, and she knew that what appeared to be shyness was simply the confidence of a man who didn’t need to put himself forwards. He was leaning over, rolling up his trouser leg, revealing his strongly muscled calf – that ease he had with his own body. She remembered it too well.
‘What did you do to it?’ she asked, drawing herself up, straightening her spine, grateful for the white coat and its borrowed authority.
‘I tripped down some stairs. I’m working as a waiter at the moment. Hence the outfit,’ he said, gesturing to the white shirt and black tie he was wearing. ‘I was taking some boxes out the back of the kitchen and misjudged the steps.’
‘Do they make you wear an apron with that?’ she said, grateful for the chance to tease. ‘Those ones that tie round the waist?’
He picked up a white apron from the bed next to him and waved it like a flag of surrender. She smiled, ducked her eyes, stepped towards him. ‘I can’t imagine you in an apron, Jon.’
‘Try harder. You might like it,’ he said, and he gave her that half-smile he had always used.
Her hands were on his knee now. It was swollen and she tenderly felt about the joints and tendons, keeping her touch light and inconsequential. But she was suddenly aware of the thigh above the knee and her hands itched to escape from their duty and run all the way up it. His thighs had been miraculous to her, seemingly made of nothing but solid muscle, all firm, nothing like her own softer versions.
‘You still run?’ she asked, keeping her gaze on his knee, a hot flush creeping over her face.
‘I try to,’ he said, his quiet voice almost a murmur, ‘when I can.’
Crouching before him, she remembered in a rush other times she had knelt before him, and remembered what was now at eye level, in the fold of black at his groin, what she had coveted so much. She had been greedy for it. Too greedy, she thought. Too wanting. Always too eager to take as much as she could in her mouth while he held her head firmly in his hands, his fingers entwined in the rich brown curls of her hair. The suddenness of the memory startled her and she quickly stood upright, tried her best professional smile.
‘I think you’ve just twisted it badly. I’ll get a nurse to bind it up and give you some painkillers, you should be fine. Just keep the weight off it for a while. Have a couple of days off work. Come back if it gives you any trouble.’
‘OK,’ he said, his dark eyes watching her.
She wanted to leave but, just like back at university, something in her wanted to keep his attention for longer. ‘So you’re a waiter?’
‘Training to be a chef,’ he said. ‘Working my way up. It’s that French place by the train station. It’s not bad.’
‘No, I’ve heard it’s good there. Some friends of mine went recently.’ She found herself rocking on her toes, a nervous habit she thought she’d lost.
He smiled, almost sheepishly. ‘You’ve done well,’ he said. ‘I always thought you would. You always worked hard. And it suits you.’
‘What?’
‘The doctor uniform. The white coat. You look good in it. You look like someone people would trust.’
She held his gaze for a moment, aware there was a challenge there, somewhere in what he had said. Inside her, a subversive urge to twist his conventional image of her by saying something filthy rose in her throat.
But she resisted, saying: ‘Of course I‘m trustworthy, Mr Adams. I have to be. All good doctors are trustworthy. Good luck with the restaurant.’ And she turned, quickly, and walked away.
Leaning against a wall in a cubicle in the staff toilet, her breath was rapid. It had always been there between them: this teasing, sexual game of one-upmanship, but she never thought she would see him again after eight years and be so affected by him. Eight years. It was a long time. Yet, pulling up her skirt with her hand and dipping her hand into her knickers, she found a wetness that surprised her. Keeping her hand there, she closed her eyes and remembered how they had met. A party at someone’s house. They had ended up sitting on the same sofa. He had made no move towards her, r
emained leaning back, which she had read as a lack of interest so she merely chatted at him in an increasingly drunken fashion, and it was only after several hours that she noticed that his eyes had never left her face and his leg was pressed against hers in a calm, almost indifferent way. It was a solid, insistent pressure which belied the languor of his upper body, as if he were prepared to take a back seat to his own seduction. And it was that which seduced her: his unobvious attention. She found herself leaning to him and whispering her address – something she never normally did.
‘You go on ahead,’ he said quietly, as if he had been waiting for her to make her move. ‘Leave the door on the latch. When I get there, I want you to be in the bath. You’ve got ten minutes.’
She had been both vaguely appalled at his presumption – they hadn’t even kissed! – yet so excited her thighs were quivering like a nervous racehorse. Despite herself, she rushed home, agonising over whether she should take off her makeup or just hope for the best. Glancing at the clock, she told herself ‘Fuck it’, ran a bubble bath, quickly stripped and jumped in.
Lying there, in the foamy liquid, she tried to imagine what he – this relative stranger – would want her to do and, feeling oddly self-conscious, she reached between her legs, surprised to find herself already swollen with anticipation. She pressed two fingers to her clit, which immediately responded, sending a judder through her, and she felt a sudden wave of want rise deep inside. And then he was there, filling the doorway of the bathroom, the front door clicking shut in the hall behind him. He said nothing, and his face gave nothing away. He stepped over to where she was lying, blushing pink beneath the bubbles, and he knelt beside her, his thighs endlessly long in blue jeans. He slowly reached out with one hand and encircled her throat, gently but firmly, a caress with a threat, his large hand seeming to surround almost her entire neck, and pulled her towards him, greeting her mouth with a sudden, penetrative tongue, as if to show her what he wanted to do, as if to say: I will take you with this, and then the rest. She felt flooded with heat, returned the kiss, opening her mouth wide, wider, their tongues reaching forwards like they were trying to get further inside than was possible. A sudden hot fucking of tongues. Then he pulled away, the last seconds of his kiss gentle, teasing, and he looked at her, half-smiling.
‘Have you washed yourself properly?’ he said, almost paternally.
She watched him for a cue then realised she had to improvise to stay in the game, so she grabbed the sponge and held his gaze as she moved it slowly over her breasts, which were standing above the water, two glistening islands. She almost giggled as she sunk her hand below the bubbles and his eyes glimmered briefly with amusement. Rubbing the sponge against herself, she felt her pelvis rise against her hand unconsciously. But it wasn’t enough, she wanted to feel her own real wetness, to let him feel her own wetness. She rose, the water falling from her curvaceous body, saying: ‘I think I’m clean now.’
Jon’s eyes swung up and down her figure, taking in her swaying breasts and rounded hips, her skin shining with liquid. Then he reached for a towel and wrapped her in it, before leaning forwards and picking her up easily to carry her through to the bedroom. Looking down at her as he laid her on the bed, he whispered: ‘It’s a shame really, because I want to get you really dirty.’
Lying there naked before a man who she had known for only a few hours, Emma knew she could either give into her shyness or go with it, but even before she had conjured up some sexual trick to show him, he had flipped her onto her front and was running his tongue over her buttocks, up and back, then dipping into the slit between them, using his hands to part her, allowing his tongue to circle and then press hotly and insistently into her hole. She screwed her eyes shut, astonished by him, but her eager body had already taken his lead and she was soon arching her back to allow him greater access, spreading herself, rewarding his daring. As she rose, he slid a hand beneath her, a finger slipping each side of her clit, gently moving to and fro as his tongue worked her from behind with the same rhythm. She gasped and pushed back, thrusting at him for more, the pleasure shocking. Then his head moved upwards and he licked his way the whole length of her spine, stopping only to push her hair from the nape of her neck with his free hand so he could bury his mouth in the soft skin behind her ear.
‘I want to be inside you,’ he told her. The bold simplicity of his statement made her body lurch with lust, and she found herself bucking her naked backside against his groin. She could feel him bulging there, a hard length beneath the denim, and she wanted it. He pulled back momentarily to unbutton his fly and, as she lay there, tremulous, aware of his sticky saliva drying on her skin and her own helpless wetness gathering between her legs, she heard his jeans drop to the ground and felt she had never been more open or more desperate to be open. All shyness was gone. Standing behind her, he used one hand to tilt her body up to him and the other to part her lips to allow him in slowly, achingly slowly, inch by inch, till she felt her whole body was being filled, overtaken. She heard him exhale heavily with pleasure as she met the hilt of his cock and, with one hand on her hip to guide her, he reached forwards to tangle his other hand in the waves of her dark hair, pulling her head back with slow deliberation, so that when she turned her head, he met her to fill her mouth with his hungry tongue. As they moved cock and cunt slowly together, Emma felt as if she was being stretched on some delicious rack, her legs spread wide open to encompass him, her body pulled upwards by the hand gripping her hair. She was abandoned to sensation, shipwrecked on his cock, waves of pleasure rocking her body, soft animal moans coming from her open mouth as she felt the beginning of her climax flutter to life.
But he didn’t give her the chance to come. He withdrew and she felt suddenly empty, desperate. She rolled onto her back and, reaching down, grabbed his upright cock and pulled him closer. His half-smile again, and then he took both her hands and held them above her head, able to contain both her wrists in one of his large hands. Pinning her there, he then gently pressed just the tip of himself inside her and teased her like this, seeming to move himself in, then quickly withdrawing, till she had both her feet on the bed, using them as leverage to push her gaping pussy up to meet him. Still he excited her further, using his spare hand to circle her clit with his thumb, tantalising her with his cock, sending concentric waves of sweetness through her, till she felt her vaginal muscles grasp for him like a greedy child’s fist and she arched her back and cried out.
‘Say it,’ he said, slowing the circles of his thumb till his touch was feather-light. ‘I want to hear you say it.’
‘Fuck me,’ she gasped, her voice broken and husky, knowing that was what he wanted to hear, ‘please.’
And he did. Standing tall between her legs, he thrust himself fully into her, again and again. The banging of their bodies together, the visceral suction noise of his movement in her wetness, and the repeating spirals of his hand on her clit, worked her upwards and upwards into bliss till she came, dizzyingly hard, her stomach contracting, the pulsations in her pussy jerking her like electric shocks and, seconds later, he came too, pulling out so he could spray himself across her sweat-covered torso, spray-painting her with graf-fiti, marking her with his fluid, which she found herself rubbing into her flesh dreamily, glad to be coated, lost in her own post-orgasm swoon, not sure who she was, not sure of anything, just fucked – and glad of it.
* * *
And so it had begun. A game where she was never sure of the rules. He would give her instructions and she would comply. Often his commands came at awkward times or when he knew that she would be busy, and she would scrabble to obey, never once failing him. He was never her ‘boyfriend’. Her friends never even knew he existed. She knew nothing of his life, though she sometimes told him snippets of her own, when they were lying together afterwards, limbs tangled, and he had stroked her, absent-mindedly, like you would a cat.
And now she was here, in the staff toilet, stroking herself, her clit marble-hard, just thinki
ng of him.
For a week, Emma thought of him. When she was taking the temperature of a child with mumps, she remembered how he would turn up late at night and bend her over the sofa, one hand at her waist, one hand pushing her shoulders down so that her rump was elevated and prone, how they both liked it to be, and how he would fuck her like that, his height lifting her off the ground so she hung on his cock, feet dangling. While she was talking to a woman about her stomach ulcer, she was remembering the night he ordered her to dress like a hooker, and how she had run to a late-night store to get the reddest lipstick she could find so that when he arrived she could take him in her mouth, kneeling obediently in her fishnet stockings, leaving red smears like paint along the length of him, feeling the head of his cock pushing against the back of her throat as she stayed open for him, saliva dripping from her straining mouth. As she treated a complex elbow fracture, she thought of the night he had decreed silence, how they had met in the darkness of her bed (never his) and touched each other like the blind, fingers tracing faces, sketching bodies, and how he pushed two fingers into her soft, warm mouth and she sucked hungrily till he took two more fingers, licked them himself, and wriggled them gently inside her tight arsehole till her pussy sprang to life, jealous, until he filled that too with the smooth satisfaction of his cock, and she rocked on him, drunk with feeling, all entrances filled – mouth, cunt, arse – all stretched, all used, nothing left.
While she filled in prescription forms, she remembered how he had ordered her to meet him at a hotel bar pretending to be a lonely stranger, how she had played the part of a troubled wife, even twirling a second-hand ring on her wedding finger, till he took her to the lift and made her face the wall, her hands held down by his on the cold metal of the wall, while her lifted her skirt and took her rapidly from behind, hard and animal, till her knees buckled as she felt him come inside her in sharp, sudden jerks. And when the man she was casually dating tried to persuade her to go on top because he thought it was adventurous, she imagined she was with Jon, who liked her lying face down, mouth in the pillow, with his whole body covering her, slamming himself into her as their bodies slapped together like percussion and with each thrust she was somewhere further away, further gone, almost unconscious, unable to remember who or where she was till he whispered in her ear that he loved fucking her, he loved fucking her, Emma.